Criminal physique

Ernst Kretschmer (1888-1964)

- German psychiatrist
- Published Physique and Character in which he described
three categories of body type associated with the three
categories of behaviours

Body types

Asthenic
- Lean, slim, shallow-chested, and tall in proportion to their
weight, highly emotional, commit sexual offenses/crimes of
passion
Athletic
- Muscular individual with broad shoulders, well-developed
chest, robust and strong, aggressive, commit violent crimes
Pyknic
- Heavy, soft body, lacks spontaneity/sophistication, commit
non-violent crimes
Behaviours
- Cyclothemes
- Were manic-depressive and typified by soft skin, a round
shape, and little muscle development and tended to commit
crime the less serious offenses that were more intellectual in
nature
- Schizothemes
- Were anti-social and apathetic, committing the more serious
violent offenses, and were either asthenic or athletic
- Dysplastic
- Could be any body type but were characterized by highly
charged emotional states and unable to control their emotions
- Associated with sexual offenses
Earnest Hooton (1887-1954)
- Harvard anthropologist
- Was dissatisfied with Goring’s findings, spent 12 conducting
research into the criminal nature of man to disprove Goring and
support Lombroso
- First influential publication, Crime and the Man (1939),
documented his study of 14,000 prisoners and 3,000 non-
prisoner control in 10 states
- Was more rigorous than Goring in his methods, differentiating
his subjects on the basis of types of crime and by geographic,
ethnic and racial backgrounds
- Agreed with Lombroso’s idea of born criminal and argued that
crime was committed by individuals who were “biologically
inferior”, “organically unadaptable”, “mentally and physically
stunted and warped”, and “sociologically debased”
- Argued that the only way to solve crime was by eliminating
people who were morally, mentally, or physically “unfit”, or by
segregating them in an environment apart from the rest of
society
William Sheldon (1898-1977)
- Followed the footsteps of Lombroso, Kretschemer, and
Hooten
- Attempted to document a direct link between biology
(especially physique) and and personality (specifically crime)
through the development of a classification system of
personality patterns and corresponding physical builds
- Employed beliefs about Darwin’s survival of the fittest,
Lombroso’s criminal man, and Galton’s eugenics
- Developed and tested his classification system, known as
somatotyping during the 1940s
Ectomorphs
- Were thin, delicate, flat and linear
- More likely to commit suicide
Endomorphs
- Were heavy or obese, with a round, soft shape
- More likely to be mentally ill
Mesomorphs
- Were rectangular, muscular, and sturdy
- More likely to engage in crime
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
- Austrian scientist
- Father of genetics
- Application of his laws of inheritance to individual and social
development resulted in significant advances in biological
theories of behaviour
- (work) also led to focus in the study of traits at the cellular
level (genotypes) instead of t the observable level (phenotypes)
The implications of heredity and evolution
Francis Galton (1822-1911) and Eugenics
- A cousin of Charles Darwin
- Was interested in whether human ability was heredity, and he
collected biographical information about numerous prominent
men of the time to chart the families’ abilities over several
generation
- Published his results in a book called Hereditary Genius (1869)
in which he concluded that human ability was inherited
- (positive) aims to increase the reproduction of desirable
qualities
- (negative) aims to discourage the reproduction of undesirable
qualities

Richard Dugdale (1841-1883)

- Published The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and
Heredity in which he traced the descendants of matriarch Ada
Jukes and found that most of the Jukes family members
(although they were not biologically related) were criminals,
prostitutes, or welfare recipients
Henry Goddard (1866-1957)
- Traced 1,000 descendant of a man named Martin Kallikak,
comparing his descendants who were conceived within
wedlock to a woman of “noble birth” to his descendants who
came from the bloodline he conceived out of wedlock with
another woman, one of ill repute
- Concluded (although he later retracted his conclusions) that
the legitimate bloodlines was “wholesome”, whereas the
illegitimate bloodline was characterized by “feeblemindedness”
Genetics in modern biological theories
Chromosomes
- 22 pairs of chromosomes + a pair of chromosomes that
determines sex = 46 chromosomes
- Sex chromosomes are termed X and Y
- Females carry a combination of XX and males carry a
combination of XY
- XYY syndrome (supermale) are more aggressive and more
violent
- Fraternal (dizygotic [DZ]) and identical (monozygotic [MZ])
have contributed to the sophistication of this type of research
- DZ twins develop from two eggs and share about half of their
genetic material, whereas MZ twins develop from a single egg
and share all of their genetic material
Johannes Lange (1929)
- Studied 30 pairs of twins who were of the same sex
- 17 were DZ twins, 13 were MZ twins
- At least one of each twin pair was known to have committed a
crime
Karl O. Christiansen
- Evaluated the criminal behaviour of 3,568 twin pairs born in
Denmark between 1881 and 1810
- Found that the chance of one twin engaging in criminal
behaviour when the other twin was criminal was 50% among
the MZ twin pairs but only 20% among the DZ twin pairs
David C. Rowe
- Supported the findings of Christiansen
- Found that MZ twins were more likely than DZ twins to both
be involved in delinquent activity
- MZ twins reported more delinquent peers than did DZ twins